The Whole Truth
by Emmeebee
Summary: In the aftermath of the Battle of New York, Steve makes his way to one of the most damaged areas of the city to help with the repair work. While there, he has an encounter with the potential of fundamentally changing his worldview.


If there was one thing Steve didn't miss about the 1940s, it was the bedding. Waking up in the apartment that S.H.I.E.L.D. had assigned him to help him to settle in, he took a moment to enjoy the lingering pull of sleep before making his way out to the kitchen.

Picking up the television remote from a side table, he took a moment to find the button to turn it on. As the days passed, he was becoming more comfortable with the device, but he still found himself hesitating when it came to certain functions. Fortunately, he only really used the television to watch the news, so he rarely needed to do more than turning it on and off each time.

As the screen flickered to life, the blackness replaced by bright colours that never failed to amaze him, he started making himself a sandwich; despite his handler's attempts to teach him to cook, the stove was still beyond him.

Glancing up, Steve was surprised to see a video of Pepper Potts standing outside an ornate building. Several microphones were angled towards her, but she barely seemed to notice them as she spoke. 'Stark Industries is, as always, thrilled to be able to support the next generation of young minds in whatever way we can. The recipients of the scholarships both have bright futures ahead of them, and we look forward to seeing what they achieve.'

Once Pepper finished speaking, the news reporters cut to a scene from inside the building. Tony was standing behind a podium perched atop a stage. Rows of seating stretched out in front of him, with sections dedicated to schoolchildren and families and others dedicated to people in business suits.

One by one, Tony introduced the recipients and their achievements to date and described what their scholarship was going to cover. Then, they walked up the wooden steps, shook his hand, and turned to beam at a photographer standing nearby. Every time, Tony grinned, each flash of white teeth smooth and indistinguishable from the last.

Steve shook his head. The motion, so obviously practiced, reminded him of all the times he'd worn the Captain America suit for a war ad. His job had been to charm people and convince them to buy defence bonds while the other soldiers did the real work. It had been a role; nothing more, nothing less, and it still made him feel dirty.

Seventy years might have passed, but some things remained the same.

But then that was the difference between Steve and Tony. Steve had gone along with the production because it was his orders, and that was his duty. In contrast, Tony did it of his own accord, relishing in the attention and limelight.

It was good that Tony was helping people, but why did helping have to look so much like preening?

-x-

The cold wind harsh against his face, Steve rode his motorbike down to one of the suburbs that had sustained the most damage in the fight against the Chitauri. Storefronts were trashed, buildings had gaping holes in them, and cars were stranded in the middle of the streets, their tyres deflated and windows smashed.

The closer he got to the epicentre of the battle, the worse it got. Eventually, his mouth dry and stomach roiling at the sight of the devastation, he pulled off to the side of the road and parked the bike. There was already a small group of people gathered there, divvying out tasks between themselves.

'I'm Steve,' he said as he walked up to them. 'Where do you want me?'

One of them narrowed his eyes curiously. 'Jimmy. Do I know you?'

'Probably not.' Steve smiled wryly. 'I'm new in town.'

'Right. Well, you can start over there.'

The next few hours sped by as he cleared away debris and helped to move the broken vehicles to the side of the road. Fortunately, nobody had gotten a good look at him during the fight, so despite Jimmy's question, they all assumed he was just a local out to help.

'I don't know how you do it,' Matt, a shift worker who had the day off, said as he sat down on the curb. 'You've barely even stopped.'

Not quite sure how to deal with such comments, Steve shrugged awkwardly. It felt odd for someone to compliment him for something that wasn't his doing. 'You've been working all morning as well.'

Matt shook his head. 'I'm just doing what I can.'

'That means something,' Steve assured him.

'Does it?' Matt tilted his head to the left, his eyebrows drawing together. 'It's going to take months to rebuild everything, yet it only took hours for it to be torn apart.' A hint of bitterness tinged his voice as he added, 'How long will it take before our work is undone? Then, what, we do it all over again?'

Steve opened his mouth to reply, but the sound caught in his throat. How could he respond to something like that? How could he make promises about things that he had no way of knowing for sure?

'Yes, we do it all over again,' he said finally. 'And then we keep doing it all over again until we don't have to anymore.'

The man didn't look convinced.

Words were one thing; he needed something more. But what?

Before Steve could say anything else, a loud shout rang out across the street.

'Is that _Tony Stark_?'

-x-

Everything changed after that. Dressed in workout clothes, Tony led a group of men wearing brightly coloured vests with the Stark Industries logo emblazoned on the front. But while his entourage immediately set to work, spreading out across the area with quick efficiency, a crowd formed around Tony.

Even from a distance, Steve could see that he was talking animatedly, using his hands to highlight whatever he was talking about. Every now and again, he stopped to take a photograph with one person or another.

Steve did his best to keep his head down, not wanting to be swept up into what Natasha called Tony's hurricane.

He apparently wasn't as good at laying low as he hoped; only an hour later, Tony was calling out his name as the man extricated himself from the throng and hurried over to him. 'I didn't realise you were here. You should have come over – actually, you _should _come over. Now. It might even be better this way. They'll be ecstatic to know they've been rubbing shoulders with Captain America all day without even realising it.'

Steve glanced over at Matt, who was staring at him with wide eyes. Great. 'I'd prefer to stay anonymous,' he said, although he knew it was too late for that.

'Yeah, that's not going to last long. Anyone who is sufficiently curious and halfway decent at hacking will already know who you are.'

'By "halfway decent",' Steve said, 'do you mean by your standards or everyone else's?'

'Point to you,' Tony conceded. 'But someone's going to work it out someday, and it would be better for you to get out ahead of them. Still, I suppose if you want to risk someone else breaking the news, suit yourself.'

Glancing over at Matt, he added, 'What are your details? I'll get my lawyer to send over a non-disclosure agreement for you to sign. Whatever the press will pay you for the story, I can give you more.'

'I don't want money,' Matt said. Then, he hesitated. 'Just…'

'Just what?' Steve asked, surprised. He'd assumed that whether Matt told anyone about Steve's identity would come down to his sense of integrity, not some underhanded deal.

'Well, my boy's a massive Captain America fan, and he would love it if he could get a – '

'A signed photograph with Cap here in the suit?' Tony cut in. 'Easy. Done.'

Steve sighed.

-x-

After exchanging details with Matt, Tony returned to tending the crowd, leaving Steve to do his best to ignore the din by throwing himself into the work.

This was a new low. Somehow, Tony had made even this – this testament to human resilience and hope – about himself and his celebrity.

'Look,' Matt said, barely able to meet his eyes, 'when I brought up the photo, I didn't mean… Even if you don't do it, I won't tell anyone who you are. You've spent all day here, and I'm not going to repay you by stabbing you in the back.'

'It's alright,' Steve said. 'I'll do it. I just don't like the fuss.'

'I get that; Ricky doesn't like attention much either. Kids can be mean, you know?'

After that, they settled back into the occasional comfortable exchange until Matt had to leave to pick up Ricky from school, leaving Steve alone.

Eventually, the workday drew to a close and Tony's men started to pack up, one of them stopping by to let Steve know that local noise restrictions meant they couldn't continue any longer.

Letting out a slow breath, Steve surveyed the area. Most of the damage had been repaired, with anything that they didn't get around to finishing having been temporarily patched. There was still more to do, and there were so many other areas that were similar to how this had been, but he supposed – as he'd told Matt earlier – that it was something.

A clamour of noise drew him from his thoughts, and Steve looked over to see Tony making his way back over again. 'You heading out now? You know, I was surprised to see you here. I thought you'd still be catching up on everything.'

'I am,' Steve said. Sometimes, it felt like he would never get up-to-date. 'But I've always been more into acting than reading. Sitting around at home all day is… not how things were done in the '40s. Not in my neighbourhood, at least.'

Tony raised his eyebrows. 'No, I don't imagine it would have been.'

Picking up some of the timber they hadn't gotten around to using yet, Steve carried them over towards the workers' vehicles. Tony trailed behind him with more of the brown planks in hand. 'You've had a busy day yourself. I saw you on the news this morning.'

'There's no rest for the wicked _or_ the righteous.' Narrowing his eyes, Tony added, 'Am I missing something? You said that as if it's a bad thing.'

'Bad? Not at all.'

'But it's something.'

Steve didn't want to have this conversation, but he suspected that Tony wouldn't let him get out of it. 'It seems a little self-motivated.'

'Well, I _do _like being productive,' Tony said as they reached a truck and slid the timber boards in. 'Or, more accurately, Pepper and Bruce don't like the explosions that tend to occur when I'm bored.'

_In for a penny, in for a pound. _'That's not what I was talking about. There are people here who lost everything, and here you are, going on television and taking photos and… and promoting Stark Industries as if it's any other day.'

Tony's expression clouded, his eyebrows furrowing. 'It _is _self-motivated,' he said, anger lining his voice, 'but it has _nothing _to do with publicity. Yes, that benefits the company, which Pepper appreciates, but I have a decades-long track record of not caring whether people approve of my choices. Our products are so advanced that even without good press, we're not going to have trouble selling them.'

His mind whirling, Steve turned and walked back to their starting point. Modern technology still baffled him, but he had to admit there was a clear difference between the devices he saw most people use and those that Tony had created. 'Then what _is _it because of?' he eventually asked.

'The scholarship?' Tony shrugged. 'I like progress. One day, I'm going to have to retire, and I want to know there'll still be people out there creating new things. Those kids are the engineers of tomorrow; the future won't be as bright if they don't have the education to know what to do with their intellect. So I invest in them, and I televise it because it opens more doors for them by making other companies take notice as well.'

Steve blinked. 'You're being sincere.'

'It does happen on occasion.' Tony grinned for a moment before sobering. 'As for the stuff here… It's about hope. Like you said, there are people who lost everything. Like it or not, meeting one of the Avengers makes them feel like they're seen. Like they're special.' Tony's voice dropped. 'Like they're safe. They're not – no one is – but it still gives them _hope_.'

Steve thought back to his conversation with Matt earlier in the day. The man had appreciated Steve's compliment, but he hadn't believed him when he'd said his actions meant something. Would he have thought differently if the words were coming from Captain America, Avenger, rather than Steve, random guy? Would Steve have been able to give him the hope he needed then?

Anonymity might feel more righteous – less gaudy – but was it really the answer?

Perhaps Tony's heart was in the right place after all, even if he liked to pretend otherwise. 'I'm sorry for misjudging you,' Steve said. Frowning, he added under his breath, 'None of that was in your file.'

To his surprise, Tony burst into laughter. 'You read the file S.H.I.E.L.D. has on me?'

'You know about it?'

'Of course,' Tony said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. 'I hacked into it within weeks of the first time Fury approached me.'

'Do they know?'

'If they don't, their IT department is worse than I thought.' Tony frowned. 'What was I saying? Right. The file. It was amusing, but apart from that, it's only useful for kindling. Not that I'd have read the same version as you. You know they give people different versions of each file, depending on what they want them to know, right? Even when they have the same clearance level. Organisations always have an agenda; it's what keeps them afloat.'

'S.H.I.E.L.D.'s is to help people,' Steve said, but then he hesitated. Howard used to say the same thing about organisations and agendas, insisting that the only difference was how much of it they were hiding. 'How much of the file is true?'

'All of it – and none of it. It's the truth, and it's nothing but the truth, but it's far from the whole truth.'

Dread settled in Steve's gut, dull but insistent. It was painful to think about the idea that S.H.I.E.L.D. might be manipulating him, but it was either that or their agents weren't as resourceful as they claimed.

Based on what he'd seen of Natasha and Clint, the latter seemed unlikely.

'Did they show you the file they have on you?' Tony asked, his tone knowing.

'No, they didn't.' What did it say? Had Peggy written it, or had it been put together after she retired? Did it include warnings like Tony's did? 'What do you think their agenda is?'

'To protect everyday humans. To neutralise any beings – alien _or _human – that might become a threat. To have control.' Tony shrugged. 'Take your pick.'

There had been a cage on the Helicarrier for Banner, and S.H.I.E.L.D. had been so eager to offer Steve that apartment. At the time, he'd been grateful for the gesture, but could they have had nefarious intent? What if it was simply his own cage – bigger and nicer, but just as restricting?

'And what's yours?' he asked. 'If every organisation has an agenda, what about Stark Industries?'

'To make cool things and atone for my past mistakes.'

Tony's gaze was earnest as Steve's eyes met his. The man could be manipulating him just as easily as he claimed S.H.I.E.L.D. was, but Steve doubted it. From what he'd seen of the man so far, if anything, he was too _blunt_, not too _deceptive_.

Feeling like his world was teetering on a knife-point, Steve said, 'Then tell me the whole truth.'

Tony glanced back at the crowd, which hadn't even started to thin. 'Not here. Did you get here by bike? Follow me back to the tower and we can talk over dinner. I saved a copy of your file, so you can read that too.'

As Steve walked back to his bike, he couldn't help but think that the delicate balance was about to break, shattering everything he thought he knew.

* * *

A/N: This story was written in response to one of the One Sentence prompts on Rough Trade. Full details about the challenge, as well as the links to the other responses, can be found on the website under Prompt 6.

Prompt: The only things that Steve Rogers knows about Tony Stark came from a file given to him by SHIELD and he's starting to realise that's a problem.


End file.
